Thursday, September 23, 2010

Yesterday afternoon I went to the hospital's EEG reading room to look at the day's studies.

Unfortunately, only one had gotten done all day, and there was a note on the monitor that said "Doctors, sorry we couldn't do all the studies today. We had to send the EEG machine to Bio-Med to have it thoroughly cleaned".

Lucky for me, it was one of my studies that did get done. It was on a confused ICU patient, so I started reading it.

The study ended abruptly at 8 minutes (normally they go for 20), with the following commentary in the tech notes:

and this why hospitals should allow hands to be tied safely for confused and agitated patients. and those jackets things that keep them in bed when they are at risk for falling or the bed rails up. it's pretty dang hard on us family members trying to combat this stuff when we are sitting with the family member. i've been pooped on, literally (no tube involved), had to try the body block maneuvers to keep the person in bed (they fell anyway) and the nurses and tech can't run to get there fast enough. Doc just get to read about it (mostly) and not see their studies. hmm, things that make me grumpy . . .

sorry, Dr. G. i read this and thinking about getting pooped on because both bed rails couldn't be put up came to mind. i did manage to get out the way before i got peed on another time.

Yaa, Biomed does not really like it when this happens. At least blood does not smell. And I really do not know what they put in some feeding pumps but you have to take the whole unit apart to clean and it is not fun.

Ok, story time. I once worked in a group home with severely developmentally and physically disabled adults. I hated my job. The final straw came the night the rest of the staff decided to go outside to have a smoke, leaving me in charge of getting all the residents ready for bed. I had to give one resident a shower. I am 5'2. This man was over 6 feet tall, well over 200 pounds, and used a wheelchair. I wheeled him into the shower area and started giving him a shower. He then pooped. And pooped. And pooped some more...I swear he must have pooped out half his body weight. He then picked up the poop and started rubbing it all over his hair and face and into his mouth.

I had no idea that rectal tubes were routinely used, having only heard of their placement for the barely tolerable every 4 hours vancomycin rectal enema treatment for + c. difficile; maybe used for something else, but... .

Surely a patient would not be left alone with a radiology tech to manage test and patient with one of those at the same time!

On another note entirely, I don't know if you're familiar with Grey's Anatomy, but Theresa and I have just started watching the DVD's. As a trained professional, please answer this for me: is there any way in hell that those idiot interns would NOT have gotten fired, like, four episodes in?

When I was in nursing school I assisted an RN caring for an 850 pound man who had broken both hip sockets and split all of his leg skin in an auto accident. His rectal foley came out. Not a good day. Took 12 people to move him and replace.

Welcome to my whining!

This blog is entirely for entertainment purposes. All posts about patients may be fictional, or be my experience, or were submitted by a reader, or any combination of the above. Factual statements may or may not be accurate.

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